NTIA Holds Panel Showcasing Benefits of Fixed Wireless
At NTIA forum, panelists say fixed wireless is cheaper and faster to install, reducing opportunity costs for underserved areas.
WASHINGTON, April 14, 2026 – Fixed wireless may be the key to closing the digital divide in hard to reach areas.
Panelists cited lower start up costs, flexibility of scaling, and climate resiliency as the primary reasons why fixed wireless systems may offer high potential during a webinar hosted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday.
“A lot of the tension has to do with the problems with fiber that are often overlooked,” said Matt Larson, founder and CEO of Vistabeam, an internet service provider based in Nebraska. “The long term economic model for fiber requires high customer penetration and tends toward monopoly, higher prices and a need for government subsidy. Fixed wireless can deploy much faster at a lower cost.”
Steven Schwerbel, director of state advocacy for WISPA, a fixed wireless and fiber industry advocacy group, added that it’s not uncommon for ISPs to start with a fixed wireless system due to the lower barrier of entry, then add fiber or licensed spectrum over time. This allows for ISPs to achieve profitability faster, and then increase product offerings and speeds as customer adoption increases.
Schwerbel also noted that fixed wireless may show resilience to climate change and serve as a better long term strategy for ISPs.
“On wooden poles fiber is less reliable than fixed wireless,” Schwerbel said. “Whether it's wildfires in California…Hurricane Helene in North Carolina that took out fiber deployments that were buried under roads on mountainsides where the entire roadway was wiped out…to ice storms here in Wisconsin where I'm based, those aerial fiber wires are very vulnerable in ways that actually fixed wireless is not.”
Schwerbel added that these considerations need to be taken into account depending on location but that fixed wireless may offer more long term security where fiber is more costly.
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